Clarks Summit University in Pennsylvania is the latest religious school to announce it will shut its doors due to financial stress.
The school’s closing highlights the brutal landscape for small colleges grappling with enrollment declines and rising costs. Those challenges can be particularly acute for religious colleges, which confront the same issues secular schools do while struggling to appeal to a declining number of young people who say organized faith is a part of their lives.
“The Board of Trustees and employees have worked to overcome the most recent challenges and have exhausted every viable solution to bridge a significant financial gap. Despite all efforts, the financial gap remains,” CSU said in a statement dated July 1 on its website.
